Stuart Ayris - Author and Lover (of books, life and rock 'n roll!)

I am the author of three novels. It is with a big smile on my face that I can report that A Cleansing of Souls and Tollesbury Time Forever have been very well received. Of course I am hoping the same reception awaits The Bird That Nobody Sees which was released in July 2012!
In this blog I post my thoughts on writing, reviews of books I have read, along with updates and information on my published works. Cheers for stopping by!

About Me

I was born in the Summer of 1969 in Dagenham, just on the border of East London.
School was largely unproductive but enjoyable, setting me up for something of a wayward but interesting life! On leaving school I had various jobs including putting up stalls at Romford Market, working in a record shop, putting up ceilings, gardening and road sweeping. After resigning from an insurance company to play in a band, I found myself unemployed for two years. Then finally I got back on my feet and I've been a psychiatric nurse since 1997. I wrote A Cleansing of Souls when I was 22 years old and followed it up with Tollesbury Time Forever almost twenty years later. I started writing The Bird That Nobody Sees in September 2011 and it was released in July 2012.
In terms of writing, my heroes are Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck. I would also include Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits as literary influences.
So that's me I guess - scruffy, happy and in love with literary fiction, music and life...

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

With I Woke Up This Morning just a few weeks away from being released (April 29th!), I thought I'd make a list of some of the words in the book that Microsoft Word appears to have taken exception to. Well. Unlucky Microsoft Word. They're in the book and there's nothing you can do about it...

Wednesday, 27 March 2013

With the final book of the FRUGALITY Trilogy almost complete, I thought I'd just post the prologue here as a little taster. Any comments gratefully welcomed!

Prologue

It is a truth universally
acknowledged that drinking yourself into oblivion can only ever take you a part
of the way. I know that now. It’s not too late. It’s never too late. And I’m
not Simon Anthony – but that fact does not stop me from wanting to find him or
suppress the need I have to tell him that I love him. As it stands, I don’t
even know where he is. I barely know where I am. I’m guessing it’s Tollesbury,
which is basically heaven to me and to Simon too. So he can’t be very far away.
There’s music in the air. I hear it these days more than ever I did before.
Still, the last bell in The King’s Head chimes more often than it should and
the six in the morning bells of St Mary’s Church ring a little more gleefully
than perhaps is necessary. But that’s all part of the fun, all part of my life,
all part of what I have become. My name is Stuart Ayris. I am all sorts of
things. Well at least I was when I woke up this morning.

I’m five feet ten inches
tall, I shave sporadically and I haven’t brushed my dirty blond hair since I
was fourteen and groovy. That would have been about the same time I took to
wearing a pair of powder blue dungarees in the belief it would make me as cool
as David Bowie in the Dancing in the Street thing he did with Mick Jagger. And
here’s me now talking about wanting to tell a man I have met but once that I
love him. It’s only rock and roll but I like it, I like it, yes I do.

I should say at this point
that the way I view myself has often differed to the way others have viewed me.
Where I have considered myself to be humorous, others have deemed me immature
and insensitive. Where, during my psychiatric nursing career I have seen myself
as one who acts on behalf of those in need, others have at times branded me as
reckless. And when I feel I have had just enough alcohol I have been told I am
not just drunk, but out of control, self-destructive and entirely
irresponsible, given the nature of my profession and the fact that I really
should try harder to be normal.

My wife hasn’t taken my
surname. She retains her maiden name due to the fact that mine, Ayris, can only
ever transform even the most beautiful of forenames into a tropical disease – Louise-ayris,
Mollie-ayris, Rebecca-ayris, Valerie-ayris – a trainee doctor’s nightmare. I
have come to believe that life is suffering. For me, that realisation – that
life is suffering – occurred when the Landlord finally barred me for a year
from The King’s Head. It’s the finest pub in the land in the finest, weirdest
village in the land. I love The King’s Head. I love Tollesbury. But I’m not
that keen on being barred.

So I have twelve months to
get myself sorted, to put my mess of a mind in order. And then may I return to
The King’s Head and to Tollesbury Time. Forever.